2 months (continued).

My dad looked at me expectantly as I examined the mask.

It was bone-white and had two fangs running down where my mouth would be and the left one was larger than the right. The mouth area was open, and my eyes had two holes to look through.

There was a blue crystal-like substance smeared onto the forehead of the mask. It looked a bit like the third eye that Zodiac employees had on their masks.

What surprised me the most was a tassel hanging down from the left side. Or maybe it was an earring.

Yes, I confirmed, it was an earring attachment. It was attached to the Mask itself though, and so I didn’t have to put it on my ear if I didn’t want to.

It had two separate sections, one that looked like an ordinary piece of metal decoration, and another at the bottom. The main feature of the section at the bottom was a bright blue orb.

I took a closer look at it

It was an eye. I think. There was something strange about it. Not just the blue orb, but the entire mask. I activated my mana sense.

The air around me shifted, and a multitude of colours entered my vision. The area around the mask and the crystal on the forehead turned vibrant blue, the eye holes were covered in darkness and across the left side where the earring began a wave of black rolled out like hair. If a person tried to see me using mana sense, then my head would be invisible to them.

Red dripped down the earring and the orb at the bottom emitted blue light, not just around itself, but around the whole room.

Then I wriggled my nose as it was hit with a familiar smell. It reminded me of the feeling I had whenever I entered the cultivation room.

It was the scent of nature.

“Why does it smell?” I asked my dad.

He didn’t answer.

I felt a wave of embarrassment. That had been a rookie mistake.

My dad and I had agreed not to talk about any of the specifics of the regent until I had connected with it. We didn’t know if the watcher could prevent it working if they knew what it did, and how it did it.

I was glad to finally have it finished. This would solve a lot of problems for me.

I held it close to me and gave my dad a hug. He had put in a lot of work and risked making a lot of people angry for this. It had also cost him over a year of time to make.

Normally, I’d seen regents for the Zodiac knights created within days. None of them used high ranked materials either.

“Okay. No questions about how it works.” I smiled. “How do I connect to it?”

My dad and I moved the conversation to my room. I sat on my dirt bed, and my father explained how to imprint my signature into the object.

It worked just like the crystal Gerial had given me. I would flood the regent with mana for one week straight. After that, it would be mine, and nobody else could use it.

I started the process immediately. I released a steady stream of mana, and it came out in a brilliant flash of golden light.

I saw a complicated expression on my dad’s face as he saw the gold mana pass into the regent. There was something else there, worry.

I looked away.

I didn’t want the watcher to see my dad as much as possible.

I’d given it some thought, but I wasn’t sure if it could see only me or if it could see through my eyes. Maybe it saw everything around me.

After hearing about the Mark my dad spent every free moment of every day working on the regent. He hadn’t mentioned anything to me, and we hadn’t discussed what I was hiding from.

The less said out loud, the better.

Whole days and nights of my dad’s life had been spent working on it. There wasn’t a single moment when he wasn’t working. I’d begged him to slow down but he had refused. It was like he had been in a trance.

Would it work? I had to believe it would.

The mask glowed with a golden light in my vision.

Soon, I would be free.

2 months, 2 weeks.

I sat with my eyes closed within a room of golden light. My dad couldn’t enter it. Just like the cultivation room, he would get sick or worse if he walked inside. In front of me the mask floated in the air, charged with energy and waves of colours emanating from it.

I had poured all of my time and attention into connecting with it. Two weeks. One more than expected.

I felt a tingle on my skin.

It turned into a shiver, and then something pulled at me. It was a strange feeling, like fighting the sensation of greed itself. I let it engulf me, and the mask emitted a brilliant blue shine. It sucked the last vestiges of mana from my body, and then it fell to the ground.

I could feel…

The world went dark around me. It wasn’t the mask. It was-

An eye stared at-

An eye looked fo-

An ey-

3 months, 2 weeks.

I opened my eyes to find myself lying in my bed. The gold mana inside the room was gone, and my mum was sitting by my bedside. The puffer was sitting in its old nest, scarfing down food. The mask was there, covering my chest.

My dad had made it a bit bigger than my face currently was, because of my growth. Even in these last two months I had used the Mark enough to see noticeable differences.

The puffer turned towards me and let out a squawk.

My mum shrieked when she saw my eyes open. It was a sound of worry, panic, and joy. She swept me up in a hug and I heard the sound of footsteps blasting through the house. Something was strange.

Had my mum gotten smaller?

The door slammed open, and a horde of people rushed in. My dad was first, followed by Jackson and Marv. Then Indra strolled through.

As the door began to shut, I saw the air shimmer. There was someone at the entryway. A figure in a purple robe and a one-eyed mask watched me. I shivered. Then the door closed, and they disappeared.

Nobody else noticed them.

A month. I’d been comatose for a month. My dad and mum had brought in Zodiac to help me. They still had no idea what happened. My dad…

He didn’t look well.

I spent the rest of the day doing check-ups. My parents didn’t leave when night-time came. I made them both dirt beds, and they drifted off to sleep immediately.

The worrying had taken its toll on them.

I felt something different, intangible, but different. I closed my eyes and examined my body. It had changed. Grown. This wasn’t normal.

[Mana: 13,850]

The Mark had activated.

How?

My parents hadn’t mentioned any gold mana. My identity hadn’t been revealed to the Zodiac employees. My skill, Mark of the Crijik, hadn’t levelled or gained experience, and I hadn’t gained any intelligence points.

Had the Crijik done something to me?

I needed to check. I brought up a memory from the depths of my mind. The world was being destroyed, and a sun was being split open. I remembered looking up at it, and then an eye stared down at me.

The first night.

Whenever I had remembered the creature, a connection had been established between myself and it.

It was watching me… It had been watching me.

Now there was nothing.

I was free.

Would it be over, just like that? No.

My impending death loomed over my mind.

5 months.

[Pain Tolerance has reached rank 2] [Meditation has reached rank 5 level 2] [Earth Manipulation has reached rank 5 level 3] [Earth Creation has reached rank 5 level 4] [Mana Sense has reached rank 3 level 2] [Mana Manipulation has reached rank 3 level 3]

Everything had finally returned to normal. My dad had stopped apologising, and I had stopped telling him how amazing of a job he’d done. My mum was starting to let me out of her sight.

My magic lessons had stalled. My dad had gone all out with his connections at Zodiac.

Indra, Jackson, and Marv had been called to Zodiac headquarters.

They were being interrogated about me.

However, that was a good thing. The final deliberations were being done to decide whether I should have access to the earth skill library in Yêlat. My friends were giving statements about my character, and my abilities.

Zodiac needed to know where my loyalties lay.

Without Indra available it was difficult to level my skills. I hadn’t realised how helpful he’d been. Every bottleneck I’d faced he’d given me tips to overcome. His intelligence and knowledge had been veiled by his laid-back attitude and our banter.

I sat next to my iron cube. I could only manipulate a small section of it. That wasn’t by choice.

Metal manipulation was much harder to master.

Compared to my earth skills the progress was at a snail's pace. It may have had something to do with the type of metal I was working with, or maybe that was just how advanced elements worked.

I needed someone to teach me.

Indra had been teleported to Zodiac headquarters the moment I was confirmed to be safe and sound.

The other nature magicians at the compound all avoided me. I was an undesirable connection until headquarters gave me a pass. Jackson had been working with management behind the scenes, but now that the secret was out Zodiac needed to make an official statement about their stance on me.

That was fine.

The church had protection around me, and Master Wilhelm had vouched for me as well.

All I needed to do was wait.

7 months.

[Pain Tolerance has reached rank 3] [Meditation has reached rank 5 level 3] [Earth Manipulation has reached rank 5 level 4] [Earth Creation has reached rank 6] [Mana Sense has reached rank 3 level 3]

Save me.

I thought my life had been difficult up until now. I had been training with magic consistently and holding a job.

None of that held a candle to my current situation.

A hand clasped the frame of the entryway, and a body made its way into the room. My dad. He stared down at my desk. It was filled with papers and symbols. Thousands of them.

“Come on champ, it’s not that difficult.” He grinned. “I think another five hours should do it.”

I’d already been working for ten hours. No wonder Cassandra and Femew obeyed his every order. He was a demon disguised as a manager.

Five hours later I collapsed onto my desk, finally finished with today’s tasks. The conversation that had started my torture played in my mind.

'The mask doesn't stop one thing from seeing you. It stops everything that fulfils certain conditions from seeing you. I had to account for a lot of factors.'

'Conditions? and how?'

I wanted to know how it worked so that I could ease a worry that had been growing in my heart. What if the Crijik wasn't being held back fully? Could it overcome the regent?

To know the answers I needed to know the process.

Now, I regretted ever asking my dad how my mask worked. The answer couldn’t be given in a single sentence, it had to be learned, and I had a lot of gaps in my knowledge to be filled.

Memorisation, layers, formations, and materials. All of these were required knowledge when learning how to use symbols to make regents.

I never knew symbols could be so daunting.

My dad wasn’t only motivated because he thought his mask had backfired. His family was a household that had built its legacy on symbols.

If I wanted to earn their respect, I would need to know how to use symbols myself. This would be my weapon to fight whoever was against me within the household.

My dad entered the room and nodded his head when he saw my work.

“I think we can squeeze in another hour.”

I’d never felt more grateful that this wasn’t an everyday occurrence.

8 months, 1 week.

[Pain Tolerance has reached Rank 4] [Mana Manipulation has reached rank 3 level 4]

I stood at the precipice of a golden monolith. It towered above me, and the rays of sunlight only enhanced its grandeur.

It was the cathedral of Fue.

I had been wanting to come here for a while. Ever since I had seen Alyssa, Fue’s Marked one. I took in a deep breath and stepped inside.

Nothing happened.

I continued through the building and into the main hall. It was filled with pews. Statues littered the walls and huge windows made of multicoloured glass transformed the sunlight into a rainbow.

It was peaceful here. There were people sitting, and others were praying. They didn’t clap their hands together, instead, they held their hands in the air as though there was an orb between them. One hand rested at the bottom of where their hearts would be, and the other at the top.

I made my way to the front.

There was a statue there. Of Fue. A multi winged being that presided over the hierarchy of divines.

I don’t know what I was expecting. A revelation, maybe even recognition, but I had never seen this creature before.

I felt nothing.

9 months, 3 weeks.

[Metal Manipulation has reached level 3] [You have unlocked the skill: Stone Grasp]

I’d celebrated as I finally unlocked a new skill. I only had knowledge of two other earth skills in existence, Stone Grasp and Earth Spear. It had taken me nearly a year to learn a single one of them. Thankfully, that was about to change.

A message arrived to me today through Indra.

I have been granted access to the skill library. But not the one in Yêlat, my current city.

I’d been granted access to the Zodiac library in Koshima. The city in which Koshima academy was located.

When I had asked Indra why that was the case, he said that they’d advocated for it. Zodiac wasn’t bowing down to my whims. Not at my rank in the organisation. They weren’t offering me a buffet; they were telling me what meal I could eat and to be grateful for it.

I could gain access to one compound, and that was it.

Zodiac compounds weren’t all uniform, they were ranked by importance. Yêlat was a small city, and its Zodiac branch was small compared to the others. It didn’t get access to the kinds of spells a larger city under the protection of a gold mask would. Koshima’s library had a lot more to offer me.

I nodded my head.

We went back to our meditation.

11 months.

[Pain Tolerance has reached Rank 5] [Mark of the Crijik has reached rank 3] [Mana: 16550]

There were butterflies in my stomach as I gazed into the mirror. Everything had to be perfect today. My clothes needed to be in order, my hair combed, and my mental state relaxed.

The first day of school was always nerve wracking.

Even if I’d done it twice.

I hadn’t seen William for months, and I’d only heard from Gerial through my guards. It would be good to see them again.

How were classes formed when all the kids were different ages and body shapes? I guess I would find out.

The 'school bus' would be arriving soon.

“Hey Gold, can you come here?”

I raised my arm and wings flapped in the air. The puffer landed on it and stared at me expectantly.

“What do you think?” I gestured at myself.

It chirped. That meant I looked good.

Phew.

The bird had grown, but so had I. My arm didn’t budge at its weight. The changes had gotten more dramatic over the months. I grimaced. I remembered this part of my old life. Acne, scraggly little facial hair, and constantly feeling like I knew the answers to everything.

I was fourteen again.